Charter school has had ample time to improve

If it could be argued that the roughly 360 kindergarten through eighth-grade students at La Promesa Early Learning Center are getting anything near a quality education — despite the charter school’s serious financial and accounting problems — it would be appropriate to ask the state Public Education Commission to hold off on revoking the West Side Albuquerque school’s charter and shutting it down at the end of the school year.

But no one who looks at the data can successfully make that argument.

According to La Promesa’s most recent report card from the state Public Education Department, only 32.5 percent of its students are proficient or better in reading, and only 10.2 percent of its students are proficient or better in math.

Overall, the school received a grade of “F,” as well as “Fs” for student proficiency, improvement of the lowest-performing students, improvement of the highest-performing students and improvement of its student body as a whole.

Academically, La Promesa is a resounding failure, and attempts to improve have shown little success over the past few years.

Meanwhile, the school’s financial woes are undeniable. A recent audit done at the request of state Auditor Tim Keller found the school’s books were in such disarray that it was impossible to render a judgment about its finances for fiscal 2016. That audit led to the PED taking over La Promesa’s finances in August.

Those deep financial problems first came to light last summer when an audit revealed that its founder, Albuquerque Public Schools Board member Analee Maestas, had falsified a receipt to receive reimbursement from the school for maintenance work done at her home. Maestas, the school’s $82,000-a-year executive director, was forced to resign in September and is facing fraud allegations that could lead to criminal charges and the loss of her education licenses.

Keller has also raised concerns about nepotism in La Promesa’s administration — Maestas’ daughter was the assistant business manager and signed off on the questionable reimbursement.

And that brings up the school’s failing leadership: Just where was the school’s “governing council” when the school’s financial and academic wheels began falling off?

On Feb. 10, the Public Education Commission voted 5-3 to hold a charter revocation hearing March 10. Eleven days later, Bernalillo County Commissioners Steven Michael Quezada and Debbie O’Malley and Albuquerque City Councilors Ken Sanchez and Klarissa Peña urged the Public Education Commission to give La Promesa more time to get its house in order.

But La Promesa — Spanish for The Promise — has had since its founding in 2005 to make good on its promise to provide quality, dual-language instruction to an underserved segment of West Side students.

It has failed, dismally, to meet its stated mission to “ensure that culturally and linguistically diverse students thrive in an academic, family centered, developmentally seamless continuum of learning where high expectations, PRIDE, respect and empowerment meet grade level proficiency.” Ditto for responsibly spending public dollars to meet that mission.

— Albuquerque Journal